Here's a Yankees All-Star Team by Decades
PLUS: JUST SAY NO TO NEW 300-WIN PITCHERS
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
If first-time candidate Joe Mauer wins election to the Hall of Fame, he’ll get to stay in the plush Otesaga rather than the out-of-town spot he shared with Justin Morneau when they attended the inductions of former Twins teammates Tony Oliva and Jim Kaat in 2022 . . .
Not that they couldn’t pay for a better and closer room, since Mauer and Morneau earned a combined $315 million during their careers . . .
Ron Washington of the Angels is the first black manager hired since 2020 . . .
With both Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman entering their walk years, the Astros are expected to keep only the former, who has won three batting titles . . .
Free agent Joey Gallo, a left-handed slugger, hasn’t cleared the Mendoza Line since 2019 . . .
Gerrit Cole’s league-low 2.63 ERA in 2023 was the best by a Yankee since Rudy May’s 2.46 in 1980, when he led the American League . . .
If Cole exercises the opt-out clause in his contract, he’ll join a pitching-rich field that also includes Max Fried, Shane Bieber, Corbin Burner, and Zack Wheeler.
Leading Off
Picking An All-Decade Yankees Team
By Paul Semendinger
It is fun to look back in history and find interesting and unique bits of information about baseball. Much of my baseball research centers on my favorite baseball team, the New York Yankees.
The other day, I was considering the list of Yankees who spent an entire decade with the team. Now, note that I am not saying 10 years, I am saying an entire decade as in the 1920s or the 1950s. This is an exclusive and very short list. Some of the greatest Yankees of all time didn't make it. Lou Gehrig's name is missing, as is Mickey Mantle's.
Here then is that special and very unique list:
1910-1919:
None
1920-1929:
Bob Meusel (1,294 games)
Babe Ruth (1,399 games)
1930-1939:
Bill Dickey (1,213 games)
1940-1949:
Charlie Keller (953 games) - missed time for military service in WWII
Joe DiMaggio (927 games) - missed time for military service in WWII
Tommy Henrich (914 games) - missed time for military service in WWII
1950-1959:
Yogi Berra (1,396 games)
Hank Bauer (1,284 games)
Whitey Ford (245 games) - missed time for military service
1960-1969:
None
1970-1979:
Roy White (1,393 games)
Roy White was the only Yankee of the ‘70s to last the whole decade. 1980-1989:
None
1990-1999:
None
2000-2009:
Derek Jeter (1,500 games)
Jorge Posada (1,302 games)
Mariano Rivera (651 games)
2010-2019:
Brett Gardner (1,349 games)
C.C. Sabathia (273 games)
What I found most interesting in this exercise is that from 1960 to 2000, a 40-year period, the only Yankee to remain with the club for a decade was the great (and very underrated) Roy White.
The decade of the 2020s is not yet half over and yet the only Yankees who have a chance to achieve this distinction are Aaron Judge, Gleyber Torres, Giancarlo Stanton, and Gerrit Cole.
Torres will be a free agent after the 2024 season. Stanton will be a free agent in 2028 and it is highly unlikely that he'll even be a Yankee that long.
Gerrit Cole, as well, is signed only through 2028, though he has an opt-out clause that the Yankees can supersede by offering him one more season (2029) that would allow him this distinction.
It is, of course, very likely that Aaron Judge, signed through 2032, will make this list.
When one spends time looking at baseball history, new learning seems to always follow. That is part of the fun and the beauty of this wonderful sport.
Paul Semendinger runs the Yankees site Start Spreading the News. His latest book, a motivational book focused on running, titled 365.2, comes out in March. Paul has also written Impossible is an Illusion, Scattering the Ashes, The Least Among Them, and he collaborated with Roy White on From Compton to the Bronx.
Cleaning Up
Door to 300 Club Is Closed Forever
By Dan Schlossberg
Even with Kate Upton as his inspiration personified, Justin Verlander won’t reach 300 wins.
Neither will anyone else.
Since teams generally limit hurlers to 100 pitches per game and insist on five or even six-man rotations, the opportunity just isn’t there.
In 2023, there was just one 20-game winner — Spencer Strider — but that species is shrinking more quickly than the Wicked Witch of the West.
Don’t believe it? Writing in the Bill James Handbook Walk-Off Edition (ACTA Publications, 252 pp., $24.95), James himself said, “In 2012, there were still 20 candidates. As recently as 2019, there were still 12 credible candidates to win 300 games. Now there are three (Verlander, Cole, and Kershaw). Kershaw is a super-longshot, of course, a half-court heave, but that’s the nature of the list. Three is a generous estimate.”
Just look at the shrinking number of complete games. Warren Spahn won 363 games and completed 382 — mainly because he could help himself with the bat — but that era has been consigned to the dustbin of history.
Complete games are as rare as Sunday double-headers these days. Sandy Alcantara and Jordan Lyles tied for the major-league lead in 2023 with three.
Invariably, even starters who leave with leads don’t wind up with wins. Bullpens blow games — ask the 2023 World Champion Texas Rangers about that — and so do managers with quick hooks. But injuries are the biggest handicap for aspiring 300-game winners.
As James writes, “What has really changed is the ability of pitchers to remain healthy and remain successful year in and year out. A starting pitcher can still win three games in a month. What has changed is there’s nobody around who looks like he’ll be able to do it for 100 months other than Verlander maybe.
“Niagara Falls. The bottom has dropped out on us.”
Verlander, already a survivor of late-career Tommy John surgery, will turn 42 during spring training. He went 13-8 in 2023 to push his career win total to 257, most in the majors, but won only five more in an injury-riddled ‘24 campaign.
He would need 19 wins a year over each of the next two seasons to reach 300.
By that time, the 6’5” right-hander would be 44 — exactly the same age Warren Spahn was when it all went south for the great left-hander. And Spahn already was way over the 300-win plateau before that.
In the 2022 and final edition of The Bill James Handbook, writer Sarah Thompson said, “Verlander has the highest likelihood among active pitchers to hit 300 wins, albeit only 29 per cent. He can get there if he keeps a 14-per-season pace for the next four seasons. That is unlikely but not impossible.”
Since she wrote that, Verlander turned in a 13-win season, slowed at the start by a teres major muscle strain that sent him to the injured list just before his scheduled debut with the New York Mets, who had signed him away from the Astros as a free agent (to the tune of $43.3 million per annum, a single-season record shared with then-Mets teammate Max Scherzer).
In Houston, Verlander is on a powerful contender. But he’s also likely to be the oldest man in the majors this year — unless somebody takes a flyer on 45-year-old free agent lefty Rich Hill again — and is far from the top gun on the Houston staff at this point in time.
While I realize the age is a matter of mind — if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter — I would not bet on Verlander lasting three more seasons. Even two would be a stretch.
And 19 wins in both of them? No chance. He hasn’t won that many since 2019, when he was a relative spring chicken.
Nor is Verlander likely to last long in his starts now that analytics-oriented Joe Espada has replaced the retired Dusty Baker as Astros manager.
I know Nolan Ryan did it, thanks to pickle brine and the ability to throw hard at a ridiculous athletic age, but he was a generational pitcher.
Sorry, Kate, but Randy Johnson will forever be the last of the 300-game winners.
Former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ is the author of The 300 Club: Have We Seen the Last of Baseball’s 300-Game Winners? He covers the game for forbes.com, USA TODAY Sports Weekly, Memories & Dreams, Sports Collectors Digest, and Here’s The Pitch. He’s written 41 baseball books. E.mail Dan at ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia: Managers Who Made Good
Texas manager Bruce Bochy, with five pennants and four world championships, is not only a future Hall of Famer but the only manager to win a World Series with a team he once beat (Bochy beat the Rangers with the 2010 Giants) . . .
Casey Stengel beat the New York Yankees as a player with the New York Giants but beat the San Francisco Giants as manager of the Yankees years later . . .
Stengel won world championships twice during his playing career, in 1921-22, both times with John McGraw’s New York Giants . . .
Sparky Anderson, Tony La Russa, and Bochy are the only managers to win World Series in both leagues, while Anderson, La Russa, and Bochy won with multiple teams, along with Bill McKechnie and Bucky Harris . . .
The list of managers who came close to winning World Series in both leagues includes Joe McCarthy, Alvin Dark, Dusty Baker, Joe Maddon, and newly-minted Hall of Famer Jim Leyland . . .
Speaking of Hall of Famers, the late Ed Lucas, who covered baseball for more than six decades, will be inducted into his seventh Hall this fall — part of the Class of 2024 in the New York State Baseball Hall of Fame, along with former Yankees great Don Mattingly, whom he knew for almost 40 years.
Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Benjamin Chase [gopherben@gmail.com] handles Monday and Tuesday editions, Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] does Wednesday and Thursday, and Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com] edits the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HTP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.
Interesting note about Roy White. Congrats on your book about him -- "Roy White: From Compton to the Bronx."